


The Rising Tide

by Lafayette1777



Category: Buzzfeed - Fandom, Buzzfeed Blue, Buzzfeed Unsolved (Web Series)
Genre: Banter, Falling In Love, First Kiss, Infidelity, M/M, Relationship Confusion, Tattoos, and im bringing this tag back:, anyways imma stop, but this is mostly happy don't worry, everyone's a little drunk, it's not unsolved fic unless you use the word 'wheeze' at least once, my favorite tag, no death this time can you believe it, oh wait no i have more, shane is an enigma, wheezing while in love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-18
Updated: 2017-10-18
Packaged: 2019-01-19 08:04:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,896
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12406383
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lafayette1777/pseuds/Lafayette1777
Summary: This is forever, Ryan thinks. Or, rather:I want it to be.





	The Rising Tide

**Author's Note:**

> anyways I'm back but this time with a happy fic!! unbelievable. still, this shares one rather obvious theme with The Body That Lies, but i guess it's up to yall whether you think this fic exists in the same universe as that one. i haven't decided and they definitely don't have to be read together. 
> 
> disclaimer: hey shane and ryan don't sue me please. im not making money, this is made up. as per usual, this comes from a place of love. 
> 
> enjoy!!
> 
> ps. i've recently been overcome by the inexplicable urge to write a multi-chapter fic about these two because uhhhhhh im obsessed. vote now on your phones if i should do this.

It’s a little bit like getting struck by lightning, he imagines. Or the moment when he perceives something whispering in his ear in an empty house, or hears a heavy thud from the floor above. It’s a jolt, a rush of adrenaline. And fear, too, beneath it all. He can’t deny that. 

Because suddenly something’s different when he looks at Shane.

It happens in a hotel bathroom, the first time. Ryan is trotting around the corner to hang up his towel and Shane is hunched over the vanity, taking out his contacts with a practiced hand. He’s in a t-shirt and sweatpants and there’s something painfully soft about him—it makes a piece of Ryan lurch in his chest that he didn’t even know was there. He stops in his tracks. Shane looks at him in the mirror, raising a curious eyebrow. He smiles, crookedly. Irresistibly. 

_Oh_ , Ryan thinks. 

And then: _Fuck._

 

 

 

(But perhaps he’s not alone. Perhaps he feels Shane’s eyes on him, one time—or maybe many times. Ryan is bent over a tripod, wearing a flannel he’s borrowed from Shane against the late evening chill, and he can feel Shane’s gaze on the curve of his neck. His nerves are hot and alive.

He knows that if he returns the gaze, something is going to happen. 

He just doesn’t know what.)

 

 

 

“Ryan.” Shane’s head lolls back against the back of the booth. “You know what we should do.”

“Get another round?” slurs Ryan, choking on the last gulp of his Jack Daniels and coke. 

“Yes. That,” Shane agrees, nodding his head vigorously and already summoning a waiter with one ludicrously long arm. “And also get tattoos.”

Ryan wheezes. “Right now?”

Shane motions with his empty glass out the window, where across the street a neon sign indicates an open tattoo parlor. “Why not?”

Ryan can’t argue with that. “Alright.”

Shane pays for both their drinks—it feels strangely intimate, even though it shouldn’t. Ryan is feeling particularly attuned, these days, to all the things Shane does and doesn’t do, every brush of skin against skin or lack thereof. Every gesture of kindness, every subtle absence. It’s left him on edge, his nerve endings firing away into nothing. He’s got a problem, he knows. 

The only question that remains is whether Shane has the same problem. 

Outside, the air is brisk and moist—a quintessential fall evening, Ryan would think, if he weren’t so busy trying to stand up straight. He sucks in a mouthful of cool night air in an attempt to sober himself up, to no avail. The neon of the tattoo parlor is still all too inviting, as is the enthusiasm in Shane’s bouncing steps.

“What tattoo are you getting?” Ryan asks, stepping off the curb. 

“Whatever you get,” replies Shane, with a shrug. 

“Oh,” says Ryan. “You mean you want us to get _matching_ tattoos?”

“Yeah.” Shane pauses halfway across the parking lot and looks back at him. “Obviously.”

Ryan can’t see his expression in the shadowy dark. Still, he looks at Shane, and Shane looks back, and Ryan wishes with a sudden desperation that he was sober so that he might have any idea what the fuck is going on. 

“Is that good?” Shane asks. There’s something timid in his voice that Ryan almost doesn’t recognize. 

“Yeah,” says Ryan, without hesitation. He trots forward until he can see the smile on Shane’s face. “Seems about right. Since we’re a packaged deal.”

“Right,” says Shane. They’re standing a little too close, now, smiling at each other in the dark. Ryan realizes, strangely, that he doesn’t want this moment to end—doesn’t want to move, to speak, to break away from the warmth flowing between them, swaddling them together against the rest of the world. 

Ryan tells himself it’s the liquor, and then wonders why he needs a reason at all.

In the bright fluorescence of the lobby of the tattoo parlor, Shane flips through the binders full of sample artwork, but doesn’t seem to settle on anything. Ryan, over his shoulder, watches a beefy white dude get someone’s name tattooed on his bicep. 

He tugs on Shane’s sleeve. “I just remembered I don’t like needles.”

“This is the one,” Shane says, pointing a decisive finger down at a tiny sticker someone has stuck haphazardly onto the worn wood of the front desk. “That’s definitely what I want on my body forever.”

The artist gives him a strange look, but goes off to make the stencil anyways. 

Ryan shuffles forward to have a look at what Shane’s decided and immediately breaks into a wheezing, breathless laugh, a hand over his mouth. “Oh my god, that’s it,” he says. “That’s fucking perfect.”

“Should we get it in the same spot or…?”

It’s the whiskey that has Ryan replying without hesitation. “Right here,” he says, patting the spot just above Shane’s heart, on the left side of his chest. 

“You’re just trying to get me shirtless, aren’t you, Bergara?”

That sets Ryan off again, even though it’s not much of a joke—he laughs until his eyes water. Things blur for a little bit, after that. Ryan thinks it might be the combination of the alcohol and the brightness of the room and the proximity of Shane. Or just the familiar smell of his denim jacket, brushing against Ryan’s shoulder with every step. But then Ryan’s shirt is off and his chest is getting sterilized and he hears himself asking, “Will you hold my hand?”

Distracted by the humming needle plunging into his skin, it takes him a while to realize Shane has obliged. 

And it’s an easy thing, after they’ve both been inked and have bundled into their layers again and paid the artist and wandered into the night, to keep their fingers linked, their hands swaying between them as they stumble down the sidewalk. A packaged deal, Ryan thinks distantly. Now with the marks to prove it. 

And, from somewhere in the depths of him, comes the thought: _there really isn’t anything like this._

Later, under the glow of another hotel bathroom overhead light, Ryan will peel back his shirt and the bandage beneath to reveal the tiny outline of a ghost, smirking out at him from just above his heart. 

(“I’m _suffering_ ,” Shane says in the morning, when the hangover arrives in full force. 

But he has a hand over the bandage on his chest. And he’s smiling.)

 

 

 

It’s not hard to determine the pattern of things—the ebb and flow of their affection for each other, at least outwardly, corresponds rather obviously to their geographic location. In the office there is no handholding, only smirking, faux exasperation and bad jokes. On camera there is only the skeptic and the believer, both slightly less and slightly more of themselves than they are in real life. 

Filming on location, though, is a different story. 

It’s not the first time that they’ve stumbled into an elevator together, giggling. Limbs loose, cheeks flushed, eyes lingering. It’s not the first time Ryan has felt the air shift peculiarly, felt incendiary qualities in his skin that he’s never perceived in the presence of anyone else.

“What’re you looking at?” he asks, leaning back against the cool wall as the elevator begins to ascend. 

Shane doesn’t hesitate. “You.”

Then they’re meshing themselves together, Ryan’s arms coming up to pull Shane in close—lips moving in tandem, breaths mixing, hearts beating out a rapid, synchronized rhythm. Ryan hears the shift of his jacket against Shane’s, feels the press of their chests together as the arm he has around Shane’s neck bundles them closer, and thinks of two ghosts, somewhere beneath all of it, as close as can be. 

Shane doesn’t pull away from him until the elevator dings, and even then he’s still close enough for Ryan to feel his breath, to sense the smile on his lips. Still, it feels a little bit like dying—Ryan thinks he might lose his grip on all of this if he doesn’t find a way to stay in Shane’s grasp for the foreseeable future and everything beyond. 

“Finally,” Shane murmurs, with an eyeroll, as they canter unsteadily toward their hotel room. 

“Finally what?”

He motions coyly to their disheveled states, to Ryan’s pink cheeks. “Finally this.”

Ryan can’t keep the fondness out of his voice when he says, “Shut up, Shane,” and pulls him in again. 

 

 

 

In the morning, they curl into each other in bed and watch _Masters of the Universe_ on Shane’s laptop while still half-asleep. This moment, Ryan thinks, is it’s own parallel universe. It’s black magic. The inexplicable shadow in the dark, the ghostly whisper in his ear, the unexpected death of a flashlight battery. Something that both exists and doesn’t exist all at once and makes his heart race in that beautiful, incomprehensible way. 

Shane traces the tattoo on Ryan’s chest. 

_This is forever_ , Ryan thinks. Or, rather: _I want it to be._

 

 

 

Shane is not as much of an enigma as he pretends to be, but there are two things that Ryan vexingly has yet to uncover about him. One is the identity of his alma mater—there’s no mention of it on his social media and Ryan has never seen his official resume. When asked, Shane usually replies “back east.” From this, Ryan is left to assume that the school is either awkwardly prestigious, or completely nonexistent. 

The second unknown is the reason that Shane refuses to drive. He Ubers to work, and anywhere else necessary. Ryan needles him about it, periodically—says his legs probably wouldn’t fit below the steering wheel anyway, or that the world collectively decided that an autonomously mobile Shane Madej was too much of a threat to the common good. But Shane only laughs, and says nothing. 

He supposes there’s a third unknown, now. And Ryan doesn’t have the faintest idea what to make of it. 

They’ve stopped in a mountain town’s singular liquor store to pick up a six pack before settling in for the evening. Tomorrow they’ll be off to sleep in the orchestra pit of an abandoned theater, and Ryan is currently feeling that familiar rising tide in his chest—that odd combination of fear and anticipation that seems to infect every part of his life these days. 

It puts him on edge. He lures Shane into an argument about Atlantis because he feels like fighting, but ends up tuning him out in favor of listening to the swish of the tires over wet pavement. The night passes by outside, unimpressed. Shane is muttering something about Occam’s Razor when Ryan butts in with, “Does your girlfriend know why you don't drive?”

There's a long silence. Inside it, Ryan thinks he might finally have a grip on that third unknown: it’s a question and it boils down to _why._

_Why this. Why us. Why now._

“No,” Shane says, and nothing else. 

Inside the wood-paneled motel room Ryan has booked for the night, the silence grows heavier. Ryan sits down on the scratchy polyester bedspread and thinks he should feel guiltier. About Shane, about Helen, about this room—all of it, really. 

“Does _your_ girlfriend know you booked a room with only one bed?” Shane asks, without looking up from rustling through his backpack. His voice is cold, uninflected. This is not a Shane he knows very well. 

Ryan lets his head fall into his hands. “I don’t know what we’re doing.”

He hears Shane shuffling around, but keeps his eyes stalwartly on the floor. It’s too late for this, he thinks. The night is infecting him, making it all seem hopelessly complicated. He’s turned to look out at the blackness beyond the drapes when he feels a hand on his shoulder. 

“Ryan, I—” Shane begins.

“Don’t,” says Ryan. It comes out more tired than bitter. He places his hand over Shane’s and squeezes, then uses it to pull the other man down until they’re both sprawled across the bed, entangled. Ryan feels a hand come up to his chest and even though the tattoo is long healed, the press still elicits just the barest hint of a sting. 

He looks at Shane; Shane looks at him. They’ve been here before. The weight of their silence pushes them closer. 

 

 

 

Usually, they don’t allow themselves much at work—there are boundaries, unspoken though they are. Unspoken and thinning every day, it seems to Ryan. Life on the road is getting dangerously close to life at home. They’re spiralling towards something, he thinks, and Ryan’s skin itches at the thought. At the notion of a choice, one day, that he’s not prepared to think about, much less make. Consequences he’ll have to endure, one way or another. Limbo is easier. The gray area has never seemed so appealing. 

Today has been slow—he’s spent the last hour throwing gum wrappers at the back of Shane’s head instead of editing the script he was supposed to finish yesterday. In retaliation, Shane had smacked him on the back of the head on his way up to make tea. When he comes back, though, he leans over to stare at the laptop screen, the full warmth of him pressed against Ryan’s back, his chin coming to rest on Ryan’s shoulder. 

He watches Ryan click through the word doc and a couple of research tabs, saying nothing, radiating heat. Ryan can feel the thud of Shane’s heartbeat against his back. 

“Your hair smells like popcorn,” Shane says. 

“Does that turn you on?”

Shane wheezes; his laugh reverberates through Ryan. “I—I don’t know how to answer that question.”

“I’m gonna take that as a yes.” 

But then Shane is withdrawing; Ryan’s eyes raise to see Steven Lim watching them with a curious expression. Ryan waits for his blush to subside, for Shane to settle back into his own chair, for his skin to cool. 

Then he takes a long breath, and wonders what will become of him, at the end of it all. 

 

 

 

In an apparently haunted bed and breakfast in Kentucky, Shane shrugs out of his jacket and hurls himself into bed in one smooth motion. Ryan barely avoids being crushed, but consents to being pulled into the embrace of a pair of long, thin arms. He searches in the twilight lit room until their lips meet, until the softness makes his heart swell. No, there really isn’t anything like this, he thinks—this feeling of coming undone. Of being remade. 

In the evening, he wanders out to sit on the back stoop before shooting begins, can of cheap beer in hand, watching the slow decay of the day. 

“Are you having a crisis?” a voice asks, from somewhere above and behind him. 

“I dunno,” Ryan replies, without taking his eyes off the patchy undergrowth that’s turning bluish in the waning light. 

Shane comes to sit beside him, legs folding into an absurdly grasshopper-like position. He steals a sip of Ryan’s drink, frowning at the taste. “Jesus, are you a frat boy?”

“Once one, always one.”

“Yikes.” Regardless, Shane takes another sip. “Last time I drank one of these I was a virgin.”

Ryan’s eyebrows shoot up, a shit-eating grin spreading across his face. “So...last Tuesday.”

“Fuck you.”

Ryan laughs, but it’s subdued—soon, Shane’s eyes are on him again, imploring. “You _are_ having a crisis.”

“I just feel like—like, we need to figure this out.”

Shane is quiet for a while, nodding absently. Ryan takes this as agreement, but then Shane just says, “Why?”

“Why what?”

Shane shrugs. “Why do we have to define it? Why can’t we just let it happen?”

“Because we’re fucking living a double life and I have no fucking idea why I’m letting myself do this when—” But Shane’s eyes are on him again, his gaze even. Ryan breaks off. “Does none of this bother you?”

“It does, but I don’t know what to do about it.”

“So you think we should just do nothing?”

Shane throws his hands up, but the exasperation isn’t quite genuine. “As long as it’s the two of us, I don’t care.”

And Ryan understands, suddenly, what Shane must have already parsed through on his own—that maybe this is all too much of a mess to end well, anyway. That maybe it is useless to try to sort things out neatly, now or later. It’s a lost cause. So this is all there is; he’ll have Shane anyway he can, for as long as he’s allowed. Regardless of how it ends. 

It’s an easier truth to accept than he expects. 

“Oh,” says Ryan. “Fuck.”

Shane won’t look at him. The tips of his ears are red. _As long as it’s the two of us_. The words are doing something to Ryan’s chest, just below his tattoo. He tries to catch his breath just as a smile blooms across his face. “We’re a packaged deal,” Ryan says, putting an arm around Shane’s shoulders to pull him closer. 

Shane tucks himself against the other man’s neck, and Ryan can feel the familiar rise of his cheek in a smile. “Fuck yeah.”

The sun begins to slip below the trees. Shane’s hair tickles his neck. Ryan feels his heart thrum, and Shane’s, too—ghost to ghost, beneath their shirts.

The sun will set; things will fall apart. They don’t move.

**Author's Note:**

> lafayette1777.tumblr.com


End file.
